Von Wong's Incredible Underwater Photo Shoot Part II: How He Did It

Last month we shared a really impressive project of an underwater shoot in Bali done by my friend and conceptual photographer Benjamin Von Wong. He stated then that was only part one and that part two would be coming soon. Well, soon is here and he's sharing more technical aspects of how he made the project come to life. Ben goes into great detail about how he made the project come together, from planning and pulling in the staff to how he shot and worked with the challenging environment.

I learned that I would be able to shoot at ISO 400, f4.0 and a minimum shutter speed of 1/50th across most of the shipwreck with nothing but ambient light alone, even at 30 meters depth. In regular english? Images that wouldn’t be blurry or excessively grainy despite the 5 year old Nikon D90 that I was using.

A challenge that is easily overlooked? How colors react to different depths.

One of the challenges shooting underwater is that the deeper you get, the more desaturated everything gets. Thankfully, with a couple layers of color balancing (Color Balance, Curves, Selective Color), dodging and burning, and some careful masking, I was able to paint back color and tones into my image.

To read his full breakdown and see more of the great images he produced, make sure you head over to his blog.

Jaron Schneider is an Fstoppers Contributor and an internationally published writer and cinematographer from San Francisco, California. His clients include Maurice Lacroix, HD Supply, SmugMug, the USAF Thunderbirds and a host of industry professionals.

I know that there has been some difficulty with pocketwizards under or around water. Phottix doesn't seem to have an issue though, but my tests have only been above water. Underwater might really reduce any wireless trigger's range and efficiency.

The one thing it doesn't point out but is implied is how organized they were for this! Von Wong mentioned that everything fell into place, but his experience and knowledge helped as well! Bravo! Well done! Such a complicated shoot looks "easy." Amazing

When I this video first posted I thought to myself, “meh, already saw this shoot, how could there be a part 2?” Well, thankfully I don’t always listen to myself because this is probably the best BTS video yet. Not because of the BTS footage but because of what is said and can be gleaned from this. This shoot wasn’t meticulously planned out over the course of months. It was done in four days. It shows how Ben’s experience and knowledge prepared him, how his social network provided leads and filled gaps, it showed that passionate helpers are sometimes more important than qualified helpers. The moral of the story: it takes more than a good idea to make a great photoshoot!